"Kevin O'Donnel Jr. - The Journeys of McGill Feighan 01 - Caverns" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Jr Kevin)

harm baby, I. Okay is all. 71.4 hours." With that, it fell silent, and remained
that way for the next three days, despite the impassioned pleas of doctors,
nurses, policemen, orderlies, clergymen, the Feighan family, and a
twelve-legged, blue-shelled baseball fan from Cygnus XII which, passing
through town, had been drafted to help solve the problem.
For seventy-two hours it lay like a stone sphinx, displaying the baby
through the window in its skin (a burly, thirty-eight-year veteran of the CPD
said, "Damn slug's holding him as a hostage." A frail, sallow xenobiologist
retorted, "Nonsense. It's studying him, as it said, but it's showing the boy to
us as a sign, as proof, that it's not hurting him. And let's have no ethnic
slurs, bohunk"). Impervious to assault (Army demolition men summoned to
blow it open gave up in disgust when they couldn't slice even a piece of it
loose, no matter how much power they pumped into their lasers), uncaring
about trespassers (the director of the hospital, studying both the alien and
the next year's budget, considered roping it off and charging five or ten
bucks a head for the privilege of crawling on it; he was overruled by the
Cleveland chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Extraterrestrials), it lay like so much breathing concrete until the time was
up.
Then, on April 4, 2083, the epidermis split, top to bottom, like the temple
in Jerusalem, and a moving slab of flesh thrust Baby Boy Feighan into the
open air. He weighed ten pounds, four ounces; naked and clean and
sweet-smelling, he had a smile on his miniature lips and a twinkle in his
eyes. His mother, Nicole Buongiorno, heavily perfumed with rum, snatched
him off the shelf and clutched him to her bosom. For a moment she stood
dazed and red-eyed. Then she ran weeping for the family car in the north
parking lot, looking back often, as though convinced the beast would change
its mind and steal him again.
Flashing, "It's been wonderful, but I really must leave," on its forehead,
the gastropod rearranged its body chemistry and revved its wheels. The
crowd scattered. An irate policeman (due to start his vacation on the 2nd,
he'd been called back for extra duty; his wife had gone on the trip without
him but not, he was sure, alone) leveled his automatic rifle and fired a
200-round burst into its side.
It felt rain on its flanks, heard noisy chattering, smelled a peculiar acridity,
and absorbed a bit of kinetic energy. Popping open a visual orifice, it studied
the cop, who was inserting a metal cube into the shoulder end of his
stick-weapon. The alien chuckled to itself. Silly thing, to think he could hurt
it with that.
The patrolman ripped off another full burst and hastily reloaded.
Although unscathed by the 400 bullets that had zipped through its body,
the being's feelings were hurt. It didn't like entities that became so angry
that they wanted to kill. It didn't like hate.
Its spirits, however, were boosted by the onlookers, who seemed not to
agree with the cop. Many were shouting at him to stop; some even
attempted to disarm him. A few ran up to it and asked if it were wounded.
"No," it wrote, "but for asking many thanksyous. I really must go. My
timetable quite tight is." It rolled forward, through the path the crowd had
made for it, reached the highway in minutes, and sped back to the New
York City Flinger Building.